Art is often times a reflection of changing social and political mores, and sometimes, it even challenges those mores. Do you find that in romance books at all? Sarah: Absolutely! Consider the recent web-storm about Claiming the Courtesan and rape/forced-seduction romances! So romance is definitely a reflection of the past thirty years of the women's movement. As for challenging those mores, I think it's probably more of a chicken-and-egg thing–"which came first and which is “merely–? a response? And can the response also push more change? I think the rise of paranormals reflects and/or challenges things in society that haven't been figured out yet (although we'd love for someone to speculate on it for our book!). I think the rise of e-books as erotica is a fascinating combination and needs to be examined and theorized more. I think these are all cause and effect of changes in our society.

Eric: I'm with you, Sarah: that's a constant topic in my course, in fact. We start with E. M. Hull's The Sheik (1919), which you can certainly read in light of the women's suffrage and first-wave feminist movements, as a reaction to World War 1, and even (as I've seen recent critics do) in terms of English ideas of race and empire. The Flame and the Flower is great for that approach as well: an incredibly interesting book when you read it next to other work from the same cultural moment. Remember, it's published within about a year of Fear of Flying, The Total Woman (remember that?), and Nancy Friday's first collection of women's fantasies, My Secret Garden, squarely in the midst of another feminist movement and the conservative reaction to it, among women as well as men. When it comes to challenging mores, though, I think the most interesting things I've seen about romance come from India, where several scholars have been tracing the influence of reading romance novels on dating and marriage patterns of readers.

Please share with us your theory on why romances are so widely read by such a broad demographic.Sarah: Wow. I don't really have a single theory, I don't think. But I think it comes back to the need for an optimistic world view, rather than a pessimistic one. I think that some of us are finally pulling away from the pessimism of Modernism. And for all we know, romances are the harbinger of a new “movement,–? a new -ism that will sweep the world. I think the desire for a happy ending is mostly universal and that women (and men) who find satisfaction in the representation of an emotionally just universe (to steal Jenny Crusie's term) come to romance one way or another. And I don't think it'll ever go out of style, however much it might change in ways that we can't predict now.

Eric: I've got a theory: it could be bunnies. (Sorry, I'm a Buffy nut; I've waited years to say that!) Oh, goodness, I don't know. The oldest prose narratives we have in the West are love stories: erotika pathemata, tales of the sufferings of desire, with young lovers who fall in love, then get separated by all sorts of unlikely circumstances (angry parents, pirates, loss of memory–"think Skye O'Malley in togas). The thing that needs a theory is why anyone dislikes it. Or why anyone reads, say, political memoirs. Or why so many people like NASCAR. It's a bunch of cars driving in a circle, over and over again. This I'm supposed to watch? No offense to anyone who does, and the day may come when I love it. (I'm getting to like bluegrass music–"can NASCAR be far behind?) But romance seems to me to be appealing on so many levels that I'm more puzzled by the phenomenon of academics hunting for a theory to explain it than I am by that popularity!

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Jane Litte is the founder of Dear Author, a lawyer, and a lover of pencil skirts. She self publishes NA and contemporaries (and publishes with Berkley and Montlake) and spends her downtime reading romances and writing about them. Her TBR pile is much larger than the one shown in the picture and not as pretty.
You can reach Jane by email at jane @ dearauthor dot com

19 Comments

I have one question for Sarah and Eric. It seems as though you’re mainly soliciting articles from practitioners (agents, writers, editors), not formal theorists. This makes me curious about your target audience for the book. I’m appalled by the elitism within the academy toward romance, so I say this with reluctance, not approval — but it seems to me that because of the nature of your contributors’ qualifications, academe is more likely to treat the volume as ethnographic evidence than as a solid theoretical contribution.

Is your target audience the romance reader, then? Or, to put it another way: what do you hope to achieve with the book within your discipline?

Also, maybe I missed it, but I’d love to know who’s publishing the volume. I’d feel very warmly toward the academic press that took this.

Wow – I started reading this groaning at the length and I’m still groaning because this was too short – there are so many points touched on but not explored. One highlight (out of many):

My theoretical interest, however, is in examining how women write their male characters, an interest which transcends the centuries.

The biggest criticism has come from the male students, actually, and it's about the heroes: they say that they're “caricaturesâ€? of masculinity, not enough like real men.

The majority of the books I choose to read are written by women in any genre – both because of the portrayal of the female characters and because of the focus & development of the storyline. Crusie’s experiment with co-authoring may address issues with characterization but doesn’t address differences in plot development.

BTW: Glad to see DearAuthor back. Will the preview feature come back? (I’d say that I don’t want to complain but that’s a lie.)

Thou asks and thou receives. ;) I had forgotten. When I read the interview answers, I felt like there were a hundred and one follow up questions to ask. We might have to cobble together another interview.

Emma – you have a good point that so many of the papers are from educators, authors and so forth. I think that one of the problems may be that readers are intimidated and think that their works aren’t to the caliber of the other included papers. But as a reader, reading other reader’s thoughts, particularly in a collection like this, would be fascinating.

Great interview. A lot of what I find completely fascinating about romance was touched on–what they say about social mores and female sexuality, and the utter diversity of the genre, bound together by certain conventions and the HEA. And the why of it all, why are romance so perenially and widely appealing. I do find romance novels inspire a certain amount of self-examination: what is it about this sub-genre, hero or particular story, that worked so well for me? What is it about this particular fantasy that appeals to me and why? What does that say about me (if anything).

I love 19th century domestic novels too, Prof. Frantz! Good luck to you both on your academic ventures.

Actually, at this point, we’re soliciting article proposals from *anyone* and we hope to have a wonderful mix of theorists and what Emma terms “practitioners.” Two articles I can say with confidence that will be included are one by Glen Thomas and (hopefully!) one by Mary Bly/Eloisa James that are both very theoretical in nature (you can see a summary of Glen’s paper here and a summary of Mary/Eloisa’s here. And Mary/Eloisa is wearing both her academic cap and her romance author cap. Ideally, the book will BECOME the new theoretical foundation for understanding romances–that’s our ultimate ambition. The thing is, WE’RE also appalled by the elitism of most of the academy toward romances and we’re hoping to start changing that with this book.

Publishers are usually solicited for academic books after it’s been written. We’re going to start hunting after we’ve accepted proposals and we’re starting with the top academic presses. So I guess our audience IS academic, but we’re also hoping that interested romance readers will take a look at the volume.

LinM, I’m actually writing an article for Eric’s OTHER book about Jenny Crusie that addresses her collaboration with Mayer and how it affects the characterization of the male characters. We’ll let y’all know about that, too, when it comes out.

LinM, I'm actually writing an article for Eric's OTHER book about Jenny Crusie that addresses her collaboration with Mayer and how it affects the characterization of the male characters. We'll let y'all know about that, too, when it comes out

Now I am really looking forward to reading Dr. Frantz and Dr. Selinger’s book. I’m guessing we can count on this blog to inform us of its release date? :-) Thank you, Jane, and all for some very informative and interesting reading.
EC

The biggest criticism has come from the male students, actually, and it's about the heroes: they say that they're “caricaturesâ€? of masculinity, not enough like real men.

I found this really interesting, and I’d be interested to hear what students think of books like Nora Roberts’ Seaswept, which is often cited as a books that depicts male interactions realistically. Or other books written from the male POV only.

Fabulous interview. I look forward to reading the book. I was wondering whether either of you has ever looked at the issue of labeling and how it affects our perception as readers–for example, historical genre romance v. historical fiction. The latter is perfectly acceptable to most people while the former is often dismissed as “trash.” Yet to my mind there is very little difference between Phillipa Gregory, Anya Seton, or Elizabeth Chadwick and many historical-heavy romance writers such as Marsha Canham or Penelope Williamson. I won’t use Diana Gabaldon because although she is shelved in romance and most people I know would characterize her as romance, from what I understand, she doesn’t consider her books to be romances.

“(Why not actually read the whole poems that characters quote one line from? That's what I do when I hit them in a “realâ€? novel!)”

Dr. Selinger, I had profs like you back when I was a lit major in college, who considered it fair game to test us on books that were only mentioned in the footnotes of the text that was assigned. ‘Nuf said about that.

Ann Maxwell who also publishes under Elizabeth Lowell frequently co-writes (or co-wrote) with her husband Evan. I find her male characters are more believable–possibly as a result.

Interesting article. One problem I have as a fan is that thinking critically about romance “ruins the glow” for me at times. Maybe that old lit major thing again. I wonder if you two experience anything similar?

Monica, while I haven’t thought about that myself, we’d love for someone to propose it for our volume….::whistling innocently::

Jackie L., I’m now pretty much completely INcapable of reading without analyzing, so I’ve learned to get my glow through the analysis. Mostly, what that means is that if there’s a book I wouldn’t like anyway, I know more WHY I don’t like it. Ditto books I do like. And I can now read and enjoy books as a critic that I wouldn’t normally like as a reader, so I guess that’s a plus.

You know, it’s all too reminiscent of those 70s bodice rippers to me. (Grin.) I’m actually so swamped with projects right now, Robin, that I’m watching it from the sidelines–I don’t have time to go and read Finkelstein’s work to judge for myself, and I’m not about to take Dershowitz’s word for it, so it’s hard for me to say much of any interest. I’ve certainly been approached by faculty to take a stand, and have been practicing my Bogart impersonation: “I stick my neck out for nobody.” Who knows–maybe if I repeat that often enough, Lauren Bacall will show up and make an honest man of me!

Regardless of the players involved, the idea that one scholar would try to intervene in the tenure process of a scholar at an entirely different university scares me on levels I cannot even access all at once. I can only imagine what the pressure is like for faculty on the DePaul campus right now, especially given the real-world political issues involved. Who knew that academic politics would eventually involve something important?? No romance, but passion, nonetheless.

It is pretty horrible–and long-planned. I (and other Jewish faculty) were approached a couple of years ago by an outside organization to get us fired up against NF so that we would work to block his tenure case from within. The university is weighing, I’m sure, the black eye of a lawsuit against a wave of publicity that says DePaul is a bad place to send your Jewish kids, because of NF’s presence on campus. Ugly stuff.

Eric, you have no idea how much I understand about what’s happening on your campus. I have the law school debt to prove it. De Paul is not by far the first or only campus to experience these tensions. Me, I’m firmly in support of academic freedom for everyone — it’s the only winning and ethically imperative “side,” as far as I’m concerned.

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